Airborne today and heading home to the news that the world's longest reigning dictator may be getting ready to face the music!

Introductions

Friday is shaping out to be the key day of the year to go see what new talent two of our savviest gallerists out there have discovered in the way of new talent.

"Introductions 2" at Irvine Contemporary also opens the same night as Conner's Academy exhibition. "Introductions 2" features eleven recent graduates from MICA, Corcoran, American University and VCU.

Irvine's reception is also Friday Aug 4 6-8. This is a great night to see new talent at both Conner and Irvine.

Airborne today and heading to one of my favorites places on the planet: Seattle! ... more later.

Academy

Academy 2006, the 6th annual BFA/MFA invitational hosted by Conner Contemporary (and one of those recurring shows that should never be missed), opens next Friday, August 4th from 6-8pm.

This is an opportunity to see the best and brightest of our area's schools, as handpicked by one of our top gallerists.

Ads

I don't ever recall seeing a TV ad for a museum exhibition in Washington, DC. Perhaps it is because our region is such a magnet for tourists, and a lot of the foor traffic that visits our museums are, uh, visitors to the area -- that museums feel that there's no need for TV ads.

But just saw some new TV ads here in Colorado:

The Denver Art Museum wants to spread the word about the upcoming opening of its Frederic C. Hamilton Building. The major expansion was designed by world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind and has been under construction for more than four years.

The ads, designed by the Integer Group Denver, urge consumers to check out the new $90.5 million building, as well as what's inside.

Read the Denver Post story here.

Congrats!

To Argentine-born artist and DC area resident Mirta Kupferminc, who has been distinguished with the Silver Medal at the 12th International Biennal Print and Drawing Exhibition, R.O.C. in Taipei.

The International Jury selected Mirta´s print entitled “Thirty thousands and one” from about 4,000 artworks received from the whole world. The selected work was done by the artist in remembrance of the 30,000 disappeared people during the military dictatorship that happened thirty years ago in Argentina.

Littleton

I'm in Littleton, Colorado, surrounded by beautiful rocks, great trails and mountain lions. "If you come across a lion while hiking," said the six foot tall hotel front desk lady, "Just look big and stare at it; whatever you do, do not try to run away."

Look big, stare at it.

Right.

Airborne today and heading to Denver and then Seattle on Friday... more later.

Stolen sculpture

A few days ago, one of the local radio stations had a story about how thieves are stealing railroad tracks and other metal objects and then sell it as scrap metal. They do this because the price of most metals has skyrocketed in the last few years.

Sometime between July 7 - 13, 2006, artist Judith Richelieu had a bronze sculpture stolen from an exhibition held at the second floor of the Atrium at 1650 Tysons Blvd.

The bronze was called Fallen Flower, 1994. It is 15 x 20 x 21, and since the price of metal is so high, I wonder if sculptors everywhere ought to be warned that there have been thefts in other parts of the country of railroad tracks, plaques, and maybe now a work of art.

I'll have an image of the stolen sculpture as soon as I get it later today.

Tapedude in the WaPo

Adriane Quinlan has a really good article on DC's own tapedude Mark Jenkins.

Read a rare profile of a DC area artist (now achieving fame all over the place by the way) here.

More murals bite the dust

Apparently the Ariel Rios Building murals are not the only ones in extremis.

According to this story by Diane Haithman in the Left Coast Times:

"On Thursday, attorneys representing artist Kent Twitchell filed a claim against the U.S. Department of Labor in connection with Twitchell's large-scale mural "Ed Ruscha Monument" — a six-story portrait of fellow artist Ruscha on a building owned by the federal agency — being painted over in early June. Twitchell said he received no notice, as required by law, that the paint-over would take place.

Within the past few days, two more downtown murals, Frank Romero's "Going to the Olympics" and Willie Herrón's "Luchas del Mundo" (Struggles of the World) were partly covered with mud-colored paint, an apparent error by a Caltrans work crew cleaning up graffiti.

A Caltrans spokeswoman described the covering as a mistake and said plans are in place to remove the paint next week. Because of a protective coating, she said, the removal process will not affect the artwork."

Read the entire article here.

However, Bill Lasarow at LAMurals.org states that the partial painting-over of Frank Romero’s celebratory "Going to the Olympics" mural was done "in order to save it from graffiti taggers" - not on purpose to destroy it, and that in fact the covering up was apparently scheduled and part of the process and Romero is going to work on the mural some more!

New painting term

In the CP, Capps reviews E3: Painters at Transformer and describes one of the artists' works as:

"...And Passacantando’s untitled clusterfuck of color doesn’t seem to have gained much from all the criticism—it’s static through and through, despite its technical merits."

And let me be the first one to congratulate the Texan in coining a new way to describe a painting, as Googling "clusterfuck of color" reveals that no one else on the planet has apparently ever used that art term before; and I like it!

Art history legend has it than when Greenberg came to DC in the late 50s (or was it early 60s?) to give a lecture, he stated that "painting should be thin." After that statement settled in, apparently some DC area artists actually broke out their caliphers and started measuring the thickness of their paint above the canvas. Eventually, according to Wolfe, the Washington Color School was partially borne out of that statement.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that even as I write this, someone is considering clusterfuckism in art.

Update: An alert DC Art News reader detects that although clusterfuck of color is unique, when it is Googled at "cluster fuck of color," these entries are logged by Google's ever busy robot spiders.

Wanna go to a closing and an opening tomorrow night?

Then come to Adams Morgan on Saturday night from from 7 to 10 p.m. and go to the closing reception for "Focusing On The District" at Studio One Eight gallery.

This photography show showcases scenes from various parts of the city.

Studio One Eight is located at 2452 18th St. NW. (directly above Julia's Empanadas - mmm).

If instead you wanna head down to the beach in Norfolk, then DC artist Andrew Wodzianski opens in Norfolk for a solo exhibit. Old Dominion University Gallery hosts "Coulrophobia and Other New Paintings." Twenty nine paintings on display with thirteen new ones being unveiled. Opening reception on Saturday, July 22 at 7pm and the show goes through Aug. 22, 2006.

Me in the CP

Nell Boeschenstein has a cool story about my recent changes in today's CP.

Read the article here.

She also writes about the Ariel Rios murals. More on that later...

Wall Mountables at DCAC

Around this town, anytime that you have an open show (meaning a show without a juror or curator), the critics tend to immediately savage it. This seems to be a predictable critical analysis somewhat unique to our area's visual arts and artists as viewed by most of our area critics.

Once a year, the District of Columbia Arts Center (DCAC), through a show called "Wall Mountables," allows any and all artists to hang anything they want, so long as it fits within a two square foot space. It's usually one of my favorite shows and a terrific opportunity for artists to exhibit and sell their work.

DCAC will be accepting and allowing artists to hang their work Wed - Fri. July 26-28, 2006 - On Wed. from 3-8PM and on Friday from 3-6PM. Spaces are available on a first-come basis and each 2x2 ft space is $10 and current DCAC members get one space free!

Details here.

Also at DCAC

Next Sunday DCAC has their last Summer Art Forum in the DCAC theater, July 23rd at 7:30pm: "Making, Showing, and Collecting Video Art." Panelists include: Jefferson Pinder, Kathryn Cornelius, Djakarta, Philip Barlow and Brandon Morse.

For more information on the Art Forum visit this website.

Vox Populi

There are only four days left to see "Home Free," an exhibition of the Philadelphia artists collective Vox Populi at DCAC.

The WaPo's Chief Art Critic Blake Gopnik, in a rare look at an area gallery show wrote about the exhibition:

"One piece manages to take a standard contemporary trick and get it absolutely right.... A video called 'Cocked,' by Matthew Suib."

Hurry!

Update: Warren commenting in Thinking About Art writes:

This video, or one just like it, was in the Radius 250 show in Richmond last year.

3 Years ago Michael Oatman, an artist based in Troy NY, did one pulling together all the time-travel sequences in movies.

Both were cool to look at, but I think you're correct to ask why Gopnik thinks that even though it's a "contemporary trick" (I read that as "cliché"), it's worth writing about.

Its funny, I believe he thinks he's really on the cutting edge with his knee-jerk support of video. Like he's cool or something because of it, and all the taunts make him more rigid.

Flashpoint Fracass

DCist reports on a private party at Flashpoint which ended with some artwork being destroyed.

Read it here.

Ariel Rios Building Murals

A few days ago I posted about a memo by Luis A. Luna, Assistant Administrator, Office of Administration and Resources Management, who announced a decision to install a temporary screen in two days. The screen will cover up five historical murals (out of 25 in the building) on the 5th floor of the Ariel Rios building in Washington, DC. These murals were created under a 1934 U.S. Treasury art commissioning program.

I'm still mulling about how to express my opinion on this issue... meanwhile here are a couple of the murals; click on them for a larger view.

Danger of the Mail


Death on the Prairie

Ariel Rios Murals

A few days ago I posted about a memo by Luis A. Luna, Assistant Administrator, Office of Administration and Resources Management, who announced a decision to install a temporary screen in two days. The screen will cover up five historical murals (out of 25 in the building) on the 5th floor of the Ariel Rios building in Washington, DC. These murals were created under a 1934 U.S. Treasury art commissioning program.

The six murals which will be covered up, and which have titles such as "French Explorers and Indians," "Torture by Stake," "The Red Man Takes the Mochila," etc. depict a diverse set of panoramas ranging from spectacular scenes of the often violent interaction between the American West’s native nations and the new settlers, to artistic recreation of historical meetings between European explorers and native Americans.

While it is perhaps understandable that the imagery on some of these murals may be objectionable to some workers or visitors -- perhaps embarrassing to some due to the nudity in some of the murals, and perhaps offensive to others due to its depiction of native Americans, and maybe even more objectionable due to the violence depicted in many of them -- in my opinion it would be even more objectionable to a majority of us to have these historical murals covered up or destroyed.

A nation that chooses to ignore or whitewash its past, is a nation without a historical memory and without a cultural footprint.

Nearly the entire world was aghast when the Taliban destroyed the gigantic Buddha sculptures that were offensive to that repressive regime, and we all condemned the demolition as a vile and barbaric act of cultural ignorance and artistic destruction. And yet here we are almost ready to do the same to an integral, if not proud, part of our historical and artistic past.

Art is perhaps the only vehicle that we have left that crosses all cultural barriers and creates bridges and memories for mankind. Visual art, especially representational historical visual art, has created for our nation an important cultural footprint and a significant record of our past. As such it cannot and must not be now censored or destroyed, lest we forget it.

I have had many opportunities to sit on the advisory board of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and in that process I have help to fund many of the contemporary murals that now adorn our nation’s capital. In that position, I have no doubt in my mind that there is no arts commission or city in our nation that would remotely consider funding these 1930s murals in 2006, much less in a public building. That is just the nature of where we were in 1930 as a people and where we are now.

But it is my hope that decades from now, if someone finds any of the murals that we have funded in the last few years for our nation’s capital objectionable, that our future Americans will have more conviction and more common sense and more guts to stand fast rather than to immediately take the politically-correct and knee-jerk reaction to "cover" them up, or consider removing them.

Keep the murals as they are.

Congrats!

To Min Jung Kim from Chantilly High School, who is The League of Reston Artists (LRA) award recipient of its 2006 Art Scholarship Award in the amount of $1,000.

Conversions

The Ellipse Arts Center and the Washington Project for the Arts\Corcoran have teamed up to present "Conversions," which is an exhibition "exploring spatial interpretations juried from three distinct points of view."

The opening reception is tomorrow, July 19, 7 – 9 pm and the show runs through September 29, 2006. It was curated by artist Sam Gilliam, Dennis O’Neil (director of the Hand Print Workshop and printmaking professor at the Corcoran College of Art + Design), and Ubercollectors Heather & Tony Podesta.

They selected works by Renee Butler, Kathryn Cornelius, Susan Eder/Craig Dennis, M. Sedestrom Guthrie, Lisa Kellner, Michelle Kong, Tomas Rivas, Tai Hwa Goh, Joan Sarah Wexler, Ami Martin Wilber and Amy Glengary Yang.

Silverthorne on our show

Alexandra has some words and some pics of our current show.

See them here.

Art Enables

Art Enables is a not-for-profit arts studio for persons with developmental and/or mental disabilities. They work with artists from throughout the region - DC, MD, and VA.

On July 22nd, they are hosting their first-ever regional art event, a one day juried exhibition of outsider/folk/visionary artwork produced in 14 programs located in DC, Baltimore, and the region.

The exhibition features the work of over 60 artists, most of whom have not been exhibited before.

Although Art Enables is the host for the exibition, the show includes work created by outsider artists through a diverse group os organizations, such as Miriam’s Kitchen, Prisons Foundation, Smith Farm for the Healing Arts, Create! For Seniors, Anchor Mental Health, Art for the People, Studio Downstairs, Mitch Snyder Arts and Education Center, Life Skills, Arc of Baltimore, St. Luke’s House, ARTiculate of WVSA arts connection, and Arts for the Aging.

The juried show, on July 22, 2006, is at MOCA DC in the heart of Georgetown. It is a one-day event, 11 am to 8 pm (reception from 6 pm to 8 pm). The exhibit and gala are free and open to the public.

Phantom Floor

Phantom Floor is a new exhibition opening this coming Thursday, July 20, 2006 from 6-9pm (show runs through August 11, 2006) at Salve Regina Gallery, Catholic University, 620 Michigan Ave. NE, Dept. of Art, Salve Regina Hall. Red Line Metro, Brookland/CUA stop.

The exhibition is curated by Lea-Ann Bigelow, and according to the news release, the exhibition explores the following:

"In the shifting territory between the real and the (imag)ined, the material and the ephemeral, the defined and the unbounded, the self and the other – there dwells the phantom.

For their existence, phantoms draw deeply on individuals’ desire to conjure, project and believe-in alternate and ofttimes contested truths based on their singular, personal experiences.

With Phantom Floor, guest curator Lea-Ann Bigelow brings together the bold new work of three young Washington-area artists – Phoebe Esmon, Tomás Rivas and Karen Joan Topping – in a collective engagement with the liminal and powerfully evocative notion of the phantom.

Through site-specific installations, sculpture and mixed media compositions, the artists excavate, (re)interpret and unleash a host of histories and memories - of places, of people, of things – in a strategic haunting of the gallery, and in so doing remind us of the willful defiance of established truths that fuels artistic creation itself."

New art gallery

I'm hearing of a new art gallery which will open later this year in DC. The new owner/director already has an ambitious and strong focus to become one of the top notch spaces immediately.

More later...

What the Right Revered Commands...

Shall be done!

Read Bailey's ah... Baileyesque goodbye/hello here.

Thank you sir.

PS - Heading to PA early today to do some house hunting - meanwhile my casa in Potomac is having an Open House today!

Who's he calling an idiot?

Jackie Trescott has an interesting interview and profile with the Corcoran's new director: Paul Greenhalgh.

Pronounced Green-halggg, or maybe Green-HA-elgg; no wait: Green-halsh! In what language does "halg" sound like "halsh" anyway... silly Brits.

Anyway, it sounds like Greenhalgh is taking the Corcoran by the horns and doing a superb job so far - this appears to be a man who knows that he needs to clean up house, fix it up and then re-establish it as one of America's great art venues. So far it seems like his hiring was the right thing and the right choice.

And I like Greenhalgh's firmness in his words and beliefs.

And I wonder if he is responding to the Blake Gopnik recommendation that the Corcoran become a museum of photography when he says:

"The idea that you would brand yourself with one message is, of course, the idiot's approach to museums," he says. "Museums are complicated places. There is no reason we can't be the edgiest institution and the most experimental over a period of years."

Now, that's what I call a response... if he's responding... ehr.. to the photography idea... that is.

Last night

Great opening at my last show with Fraser Gallery. Thanks to all of you who came by to say "goodbye" and "hello" in my new incarnation sans Fraser.

NBC 4 was there filming the opening and discussing my next moves and the history of DC Art News, etc. They also interviewed the fair Katie Tuss, who will be one of the writers helping me expand DC Art News.

There were also a couple of newspaper writers, a few gallerists (I finally met face to face with Nevin Kelly), some curators, a museum director and tons of artists and friends. Thanks to all of you for coming.

Brisk sales, including both pieces by Amy Lin, who is very hot right now - my advice: Buy Lin now before she skyrockets. Lin is currently in at least two more shows around town and selling well everywhere. And she should sign up with a gallery soon.

Best in show winner was a new artist (new to me anyway): Taryn Wells from Medfield, Mass. Powerful, powerful skilled drawings that convey not only exceptional techical skill but also that immensely hard ability to deliver a powerful message via a visual image.



Both of Wells' pieces also sold as soon as the show opened, and I see bright things in the future of this artist.

Award winners:

Best in Show: Taryn Wells

First Place: Andrew Decaen
Second Place: Joseph Hamilton
Third Place: Jenny Davis

Hon. Mention: Anna Conti
Hon Mention: Roland Delcol
Hon. Mention: Angela Grey

This is the kind of lunacy that makes me wanna...

From: Luis A. Luna
Assistant Administrator, Office of Administration and Resources Management

To: All EPA Employees

As you may know, on March 15, 2005, GSA initiated the Section 106 consultation process, under the National Historic Preservation Act, regarding the current setting of the historic murals in the headquarters Ariel Rios North and South buildings. GSA established a consulting group and developed a Web site to solicit comments from interested parties: www.gsa.gov/arielriosmurals.

An executive summary of these comments is now posted on the Web site.

The next steps of this process include GSA identifying a panel of experts that will meet in mid-October to provide them with a higher level of information and input on the murals. EPA employees, members of the Native American community and other interested parties will be invited to participate. At the completion of the forum, the recorded dialogue will be made available to the general public and a final round of public comments will be taken. Based on the information derived by the forum and the public comments, GSA is expected to make its final determination regarding the murals by January 31, 2007.

In the meantime, GSA has completed the design of a temporary screen that will be placed in front of the murals on the 5th floor of the Ariel Rios building. The screen is expected to be ready for installation no later than July 21, 2006.

This will be the subject of a rant from me later on... below is "The Red Man Takes the Mochila."

DCist Love

She's cute, she's very funny on her own personal blog and she's developed really quickly into a damned good art writer and critic as well, and Heather Goss sends DC Art News some Internet love and some really good advice on an area that has really been the subject of a lot of thinking for me: Keeping my focus on the Greater DC area constant and prevent it from thinning when I start sniffing around Philly and Baltimore and all that's between.

Read it here.

Then come by tomorrow to the Fraser Gallery between 6-9PM and say hello, goodbye and hello again.

Corcoran Opening

Packed house last night at the Corcoran's private opening for "redefined: Modern and Contemporary Art from the Collection."

Ran into the legendary Lida Moser and we had a nice walk-though of the exhibit, which provides an opportunity to see many of the museum’s most important works from the 1950s to the present.

If I have time I will return and do a better (and slower) walkthrough of the show, but on a first look, I think that this massive Ida Applebroog steals the exhibitions, and the Cornell boxes are always amazing (as usual).

I was also taken by this large oil by Kim Dingle, which reminded me of the recent work of local painter Rachel Waldron (who was at the Corcoran last night).

Art for Life

The 13th annual cocktail reception and live auction benefiting Whitman-Walker Clinic's Latino Services event will take place on Friday, November 17, 2006 at the beautiful Organization of American States, one of the city’s premier venues.

They will feature the live/silent auction format again this year allowing them to accommodate a larger number of works of art from artists, as well as keep our guests engaged in the auction throughout the night.

This is one of my favorite art auctions and a major fundraiser for the Whitman-Walker Clinic.

I really encourage artists to donate work to this auction.

Hurry! The deadline to register is today!

To donate art for the auction go here or contact:

Martha N. Miers
Associate Director of Special Events
Whitman-Walker Clinic
1407 S Street NW
Washington, DC 20009
202.797.3529 (o)
202.797.3560 (f)
www.wwc.org

Artwork for Dulles

The airport is looking for some proposals to add artwork to some of the Dulles Metrorail stations.

Deadline is August 4, 2006 and the prospectus can be downloaded here.

What's a Studio?

ArtDC wants to know.

What is a studio, and why do you need one? There's a topic about it here.

Chalk4Peace

Chalk4Peace is a young person's global art project planned for Sept. 16-17, 2006 with the goal to have one million young artists of all ages using sidewalk chalk to create their visions and messages of Peace.

To create a Chalk4Peace event in your neighborhood. Contact: John Aaron, Director or visit www.chalk4peace.org, or call 703-528-4800 to find out more about how you and your community can be part of the project.

The Franz and Virginia Bader Fund

Deadline: September 15, 2006

The Franz and Virginia Bader Fund welcomes applications from visual artists aged 40 years or older, who live within 150 miles of Washington, D.C. and can demonstrate that they have the potential to benefit as artists from a grant.

The Franz and Virginia Bader Fund does not, however, accept applications from filmmakers, video artists, and performance artists. In 2005 the Franz and Virginia Bader Fund awarded three grants of $15,000 each.

The deadline for applications is September 15, 2006. Application forms may be downloaded from the fund's web site: www.baderfund.org or may be requested by sending an email to grants@baderfund.org or by calling 202-288-4608.

This will be my last one

As a result of several personal decisions, the show that will open next Friday, July 14, 2006,(and which I juried) at the Fraser Gallery will be my last one associated with the gallery.

When Catriona and I opened the first Fraser Gallery in Georgetown in 1996, we did so with a well-defined focus and backed by the financial empire of Mr. Visa and Mrs. MasterCard. We also did it without stealing another gallery's mailing list to start with (in fact we did not have a mailing list at all!) and with a working list of what to do - number one on that list was (and is): "pay the artist first."

In spite of the tremendous apathy that our local media shows all art galleries, and the dreadful state of art collecting and support to local artists exhibited by our general public, the gallery did very well over the years, and in 2002 we opened a second, larger gallery in Bethesda. For the next four years we operated two art galleries concurrently, in a whirlwind of work and exhibitions. Earlier this year we closed the original gallery in Georgetown and concentrated our efforts on the Bethesda location.

The gallery continues to do well, and this year has so far been our best year ever, already surpassing comparisons with 2005, which has been our best year to date. Fraser Gallery remains one of the key independently owned commercial visual art galleries in our region and will be so for many years to come.

The show which opens Friday, and which I juried, is our annual juried competition, the first of which I also juried in 1996. Following this exhibition, I will no longer be associated personally or legally with the gallery, which will be continued to be directed (and now solely owned) by the talented and hardworking Catriona Fraser.

I am making this decision as a result of several key personal items, one of which is the fact that within the next couple of months I will commence a major shift in location, which will see me partially re-locate to the area in or around Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, a couple of hours north of here.

I am NOT "leaving" the DC area. In fact my tentative plans call for me working physically (and living) in the DC area most weekdays, and spending weekends and some weeks in Swarthmore.

This will leave me with some much needed time in my hands to do a couple of projects, one of which should be of interest to all readers of DC Art News.

(a) As some of you know, I have been receiving a handful of offers for the DC Art News "concept" to go national in the sense of associating the blog with a national entity and expand its coverage and concept to a national audience. I have resisted doing this for obvious reasons: lack of time.

And while I will not transform DC Art News into a national "art news" blog, with the help of two additional writers, who will help me add more content to the blog (content that I will edit and they will do the work to make it bloggable), I will expand DC Art News to cover more of the geographical area that I will be "living" in, and thus sometime soon I will start covering and calling it "Mid-Atlantic Art News."

More on this later.

(b) I will spend the next year investigating and deciding on how to re-invent myself as a private art dealer. This may end up with a new physical gallery space somewhere yet to be decided, but certainly will soon definately include both an online presence and a private presence representing several artists in art fairs around the nation and perhaps Europe along the Douz & Mille model and/or the Curator's Office model.

(c) I will finally (hopefully) have to some time in my hands to finish a couple of long-delayed book projects. The first is a guide to DC area art galleries and museums, for which I have been under contract to produce for now over a year. Tentatively titled "Art Around the Capital," the guide will list all visual art spaces around the DC area as well as details about the space, its artists, etc. More on that later as well. The second is my long-delayed art history book on the art of the Pictish Nations of pre-Celtic Scotland.

(d) I will also devote more time and effort to my own artwork.

And thus this Friday's opening will be my farewell show at Fraser Gallery, and I hope to see as many of you there as possible. The opening will feature the work of the following artists:

Collin Asmus, Boston, MA
Marina Bare, Salisbury, NC
Lisa Brotman, Bethesda, MD
Robert Cantor, Annandale, VA
Mary Chiaramonte, Broadway, VA
Anna Conti, San Francisco, CA
Jenny Davis, Hughesville, MD
Andrew Decaen, Orlando, FL
Roland Delcol, Knokke, Belgium
Linda Frost, Santa Monica, CA
Angela Grey, Cleveland, OH
James Halloran, Arlington, VA
Joseph Hamilton, Landover, MD
Amy Lin, Fairfax, VA
Gabrielle Mayer, Louisville, KY
Sharon Moody, McLean, VA
Nancy Reinke, Alexandria, VA
Peter Van Riper, Washington, DC
Paul Ryan, Baltimore, MD
Hannah Ueno-Olsen, Hammonton, NJ
Taryn Wells, Medfield, MA

The opening is this coming Friday from 6-9PM and will (of course) have loads of sangria and the terrific art of the above artists. Come by and say hello and farewell and hello again.

See ya there!

New Art Space

Opening on July 14, 2006 from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm, Hillyer Art Space presents Scratching the Surface: a Survey of Artists in the Washington Region, the first show in their series of Washington Region Programs.

It will remain on view through August 24, 2006 and aims to bring recognition to a variety of artists living and working in the Washington region. The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Kevin MacDonald, a well-known and much loved artist who worked in the DC area and who died recently.

The new art venue assembled a committee of some of the most prominent visual artists in the region to identify colleagues and other lesser exposed artists working in a variety of medium such as sculpture, screen prints, ceramics, painting, ink on paper, mixed media etc. for inclusion in the show. Scratching the Surface will feature works by Jiha Moon, Erin Root, Jody Bergstresser, Dan Dudrow, Zachary Jackson, Amy Lin, Mai Kojima, Jeffrey Meizlik, Conrad Meyers II, John Trevino, and Steven F. Kijek

The panel responsible for the selection of these artists is made up of some of the region’s most celebrated and respected artists, including: Bill Christenberry, Manon Cleary, John Dreyfuss, David Driskell, Bill Dunlap, Helen Frederick, Carol Brown Goldberg, Pat Goslee, Rebecca Kamen, Quentin Mosley, Dennis O’Neil, Wendy Ross, John Ruppert, Foon Sham, Renee Stout, Lou Stovall, Duncan Tebow, Mindy Weisel, and Frank Wright.

Me in American Weekly

American Weekly with a really cool article on The Real (Art) World exhibition at AU and a cool pic of yours truly.

Read it here.

Exploit and Click

Wish I had thought of the above title, but instead read this interesting article by Jim Lewis at Slate.

Congrats!

To Italy for winning its fourth World Cup.

Artists' Market is Today

Today is the Bethesda Artists Market- till 5PM.

Directions here.

Arts Beat

Rachel Beckman, who is the new writer for the Arts Beat column writes a superb profile of area artist Eric Finzi, who's currently exhibiting at Heineman-Myers.

Correcto Mundo

A twittering correction.

Boozer


I'll be damned if I didn't learn a thing or two from this great CP profile on area artist Margaret Boozer.

Not only do I think that Boozer is one of the key, really key, artists in our area... but also someone who's gonna leave a deep footprint on contemporary art, and also one of the most generous and kind spirits around.

Kudos to Capps and the CP for a really good profile on one of our top leading artists.

Funny thing about the Weekend online sessions

It seems to me that the Weekend staff is ignoring any art-related questions that they get via their online sessions.

I know this because some of you email me afterwards telling me that they asked questions and were ignored. A reader sends the following:

So I submitted a darn good comment to the Weekend Online thing...

1) about saying they are experts in art but when they introduced O'Sullivan they only talk about his interview of some actor/comedian, and

2) about how the NY Times somehow is able to publish lots of art articles every week even though NYC has much more food/theatre/music/etc than DC... how in the world can the Times possibly allocate such space to art??? :)

They ignored the comment and focused almost solely on water parks for 3 year olds... are they suppressing the inquiries about art coverage now?

I don't know, so my open question to Joyce Jones, editor of the Weekend section: "Are you suppressing/ignoring art related questions now?"

Artists Roundtable at AAC

Artists Roundtable: The MFA Graduate Experience in 2006
Date: Thursday, July 13, 2006, 7 PM
Location: Arlington Arts Center, 3550 Wilson Blvd, Arlington, VA
More Info: 703. 248.6800 or www.arlingtonartscenter.org
Cost: Free. Reservations not required, but are appreciated.

On July 13, several artists in the Center's current New Art Examined: Work by 2006 MFA Graduates in the Mid-Atlantic States discuss their work, the current academic environment, and the experience of entering the commercial art world when the market is hot. Exhibiting artists received degrees from VCU, Maryland Institute, College of Art, Carnegie Mellon, and Penn State, among others. AAC curator Carol Lukitsch will moderate the discussion, and audience participation is encouraged. If you’ve attended an AAC roundtable before, you know how interesting the dialogue can get.

The Artists’ Roundtable is free, but reservations are appreciated to ensure adequate seating. For more information, call 703.248.6800 or info@arlingtonartscenter.org.

Weekend Online

The Weekend staff will be online answering your questions today at 11AM. Ask them why they have two to three times more theatre and movie coverage than visual arts, and why they publish many freelancers (a good thing) who cover everything but the visual arts (a bad thing), which is only covered by Michael O'Sullivan.

Details here.

Job in the arts

Closing date is July 11, 2006

The Hirshhorn is looking for a new Director of Communications & Marketing. They seek an outstanding professional to lead their full-service communications and marketing department.

For a more detailed position description and application instructions please visit www.si.edu/ohr, Announcement number 06WJ-6180 and closing date is July 11, 2006.

Salary: $91,407.00 - $118,828.00.

Mail:
Smithsonian Institution Office of Human Resources
PO Box 50638
Washington DC 20091

Fax: 202 275 1114

Hand deliver or Fedex:
750 Ninth Street NW
Suite 6100
Washington DC 20560

Art In Embassies Program

Established by the United States Department of State in 1964, the Art In Embassies Program is a global museum that exhibits original works of art by U.S. citizens in the public rooms of approximately 180 American diplomatic residences worldwide.

To submit images to their staff for consideration in upcoming exhibitions please e-mail .jpg or .gif images of your works no larger than 50k in size, to: artinembassies@state.gov. Website here. Submissions accepted on a ongoing basis.

Financial Assistance

Deadline is ongoing.

This program assists artists financially in completion of MFA and Ph.D. programs. Grants of up to $5,000 are awarded to individual artists. Deadline is ongoing. For information, contact:

The College Art Association Fellowship Program
275 7th Ave.
New York, NY 10001
(212) 691-1051

Opportunity for Photographers

Deadline: July 15, 2006

The W. Eugene Smith Fund is an annual grant awarded to a photographer whose work follows the tradition of W. Eugene Smith's work as a photographic essayist. A grant in the amount of $30,000 is offered. For more information, contact:

The Howard Chapnick Grant
W. Eugene Smith Fund, Inc.
c/o International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036

Art Fair in DC

Last April I mentioned about a possible Art Fair coming to DC.

The organizers were sniffing around the various DC galleries and met with various art dealers to see what the level of interest for organizing a major art fair in the nation's capital area was.

Well, the nation's first major art fair is coming this April 27-30, 2007 at the Convention Center.

Applications can be downloaded here.

Sister, Sister

The painting sisters, Andrea Cybyk Sherfy and Jan Sherfy have an exhibition opening at the Jo Ann Rose Gallery at Lake Anne (1609-A Washington Plaza
Reston, VA 20190) July 9th, with a reception from 2-4pm.

This is not only a celebration of the bond of sisters creating art, but also a showcase of two exceptionally talented abstract painters.

By the way, go early, as these sisters sell a lot of their work.

Poconoing

Still in the Poconos for the 4th, but will return later tonight... I love all the antique shops and used book sellers that one runs into around this area... just scored about a dozen signed SK books at a helluva great deal!

Happy B'day US of A...